My friend Jenna is off on a cross-country adventure this summer, and earlier this month (or possibly last month; I’ve lost track) she asked if I’d like to join her for a week of touring thrift stores in the RV. I worked with Jenna at a newspaper in Missouri for about five years, but we never really hung out. So I don’t know her all that well, really, although I do know her better than my mother- and sister-in-law thought I did. They were under the impression that I’d never met her before and that this was some sort of internet thing. Which it is not. I only use Craigslist to arrange every third excursion.

Anyway, after some schedule-wrangling, Rockford and I decided we could make it happen. And so it happened that I joined the All Thrifty States team on a portion of their southern tour. (Said team consisting of Jenna and HaRVey the RV.)

I was supposed to meet Jenna in Atlanta, so I bid a tearful adieu to my little family and hit the highway. (Actually, they hit the highway first. Then I had a bowl of ice cream, got the mail and then hit the road. It was a little tearful, though.) Rockford’s dear, delightful cousin Carrie had agreed to car-sit for me this week, so my first order of business was to find her apartment. Except that I was quite a bit earlier than I’d expected to be, and I didn’t want to impede upon her entire day. So I stopped at Ikea first. I usually enjoy a stroll through the Swedish shopping paradise, but on Saturday? Not so much. At least half of Atlanta was at Ikea with me. I walked around, didn’t buy a single item and then set off to find dear, delightful Carrie’s house.

In general, I am not very good with navigating (foreshadowing!), so I was greatly surprised to find her building with no problems at all. She showed me where to park the car and then took me on a tour of her ridiculously cool apartment. It’s in a converted warehousey-factoryish building, and it’s kind of an amazing space. Carrie very graciously watched half of an episode of “Phineas and Ferb” with me and then – as retaliation, perhaps? – made me watch a brief portion of the utterly ridiculous “Yentl” (How could they not know you were a lady, Barbra? Nobody suspected? I don’t buy it.) before driving me to my rendezvous point with Jenna.

Or should I say trying to drive me to my rendezvous point. We took the wrong interstate, corrected that and then couldn’t find the mall, and I couldn’t make the toll coins add up to 50 cents. We finally found Jenna, but it took about twice the amount of time that it should have.

And then I wrote this, happily ensconced in HaRVey. Can I tell you how excited I am to be riding in a vehicle that comes with its own toilet? I might not be able to road trip in a boring old car ever again.

Lessons learned on Day One: